Mountain residents bitterly fought the Hawarden tract before the Board of Supervisors overrode their concerns in 2005 and approved it despite the serious flaws.

The county and Hawarden fought the lawsuit and lost, then continued fighting to reduce legal fees they owed to the environmental groupsâ lawyers. In June, a retired judge was brought in to referee the dispute.

Late Friday, the environmental groups learned they had won. The court ordered the county to pay $757,451 to the lawyers.

A county spokesman said earlier that no one could remember a developer going out of business and leaving the county holding the bag this way. The incident shows the danger of violating the law, even when someone else promises to foot the bill.

On another subject, I wrote a letter last week to the San Bernardino International Airport Authority informing the board and staff that the agency was in violation of the California Public Records Act.

It failed to respond to a request I filed in person at the authorityâs counter Sept. 13.

Some of the material I requested â" agenda and staff reports related to the agencyâs upcoming move to a refurbished building â" should have been available at the counter.

Public records law requires that when a document is indisputably public, agencies âshall make the records promptly available to any person.â

Such records are supposed to be open to inspection during normal office hours.

If thereâs a legitimate legal question of whether a record is public (and here there was not), agencies can take up to 10 working days to provide it or the legal grounds for withholding it.

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